


Stay

by thewolvescalledmehome



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Car Accidents, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 22:10:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19839508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewolvescalledmehome/pseuds/thewolvescalledmehome
Summary: For the dialogue prompt on tumblr: "I could have died and you couldn't have cared less."Or where Sansa gets in a car accident, but Jon doesn't visit her in the hospital.





	Stay

The text came in soon after Sansa had gotten home. She’d resolved to not go back out—she knew a storm was coming, but it was the text she had been waiting for for nearly two years.

 **Jon’s back** , it read.

Jon, who had been at war since she was eighteen. Jon, whom she had kissed before he left. Jon, whom she thought she might be in love with.

Had it been anyone but Jon, she might not have grabbed the first things her hands touched and flew out the door without thinking. Had it been anyone but Jon, she might have gone in the morning, after the storm had passed. Had it been anyone but Jon, she wouldn’t have been speeding down a country lane at ten at night during a downpour.

Had it been anyone but Jon, she might not have crashed.

* * *

Sansa awoke, groggy, in a hospital bed.

“Oh, thank the gods,” she heard distantly. She turned blearily towards the voice.

“Mom?” she croaked.

“I’m here, I’m here. It’s all right.”

She felt something soft and warm grip her hand.

“What… what happened?”

“You got in an accident. They said you were going too fast for the weather. Your doctors will be in soon, I’m sure…”

Sansa drifted off again soon after that.

* * *

When she woke up next, she found her siblings all by her bedside.

“Oh good, you’re awake. It was getting boring just staring at you,” Arya muttered, though Sansa didn’t hear her usual bite or sarcasm. The words fell soft.

“You were the one who wanted to get here as soon as visiting hours started,” Robb chimed in.

“Shut up.”

“Where’s Jon?” Sansa asked, struggling to sit up. She saw clearly as all of her siblings glanced at each other. “What happened?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Arya said urgently. “He’s just… not here.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll see him soon, though. Dad said the doctors thought you could come home tomorrow or the day after.” She looked at Robb as he spoke, but he didn’t meet her eyes.

There was something they weren’t telling her.

“How is he?”

“Dad?”

“Jon.”

“Fine.” They all shrugged.

“I’m fine, you know. You don’t have to tiptoe around me.”

“The doctors would disagree. They said you have a concussion, whiplash, bruised ribs…”

“Well, if I’m well enough to go home soon, I can’t be that bad off, can I?” Again, her siblings were quiet. It was so unlike them, to have all four of them quiet at the same time. It set her on edge. She was sure there must be something else wrong, either with her or with Jon.

“Is there something else?” She started patting her body, looking for something wrong or broken.

“Well, it’ll heal…” Arya hedged. Sansa’s panic flared. She wasn’t sure if it was for herself or for Jon.

“Pass her the mirror.”

“The mirror?” she yelped, her hands flying to her face. She felt bandages along the left side of her face; there was one over his cheekbone and one above her brow. The mirror just confirmed what she felt.

Her panic waned at this. Cuts she could deal with. As Arya said, they’d heal. Though she was certainly irritated about her implied vanity.

Unless, of course, their hesitancy wasn’t about her reaction at all, and there truly was something else aside from a few cuts.

Despite her efforts to discover the truth, her siblings refused to give any more information, making them seem all the more cagey.

When her parents replaced her siblings at her bedside, she tried again. Neither of them seemed to know what she was taking about. They both said Jon was fine; he was at home. He’d been jetlagged, that was why he hadn’t come to visit.

Sansa wanted to believe her parents, who seemed earnest in their claims that he wanted to come and he had hoped she was okay, but the idea that they didn’t know everything about Jon wasn’t a new one. She was sure her siblings knew more, so she took more stock in their reactions that her parents’.

* * *

Sansa thought when she arrived at her parents’ house, she might find Jon waiting to greet her. She knew he was staying with them. She knew he had nowhere else to go.

Except he wasn’t there.

When she asked, Robb said he was probably at the gym. Said he should be home for dinner.

Dinner came and went with no sight of him.

She stayed up late in the living room, thinking she might catch him coming in, but she eventually grew sleepy and resolved she’d see him in the morning.

At that point, though, she was upset.

She had kissed him before he left for war two years ago, and whispered _promise you’ll come back to me_ , and he said murmured, _I will, I promise._

She had flown to Winterfell as soon as she heard he was back, and yet he hadn’t come to see her? Seemed to be avoiding her?

It hurt. That hurt more than the concussion, the bruised ribs, the whiplash. She barely felt any of that compared to the idea of him avoiding her.

That night Sansa dreamed of the night Jon shipped off to war. She had been steeling her nerves to admit her feelings for him for a while, and realized she had quickly all but run out of time to do so.

On the eve he was meant to leave, she showed up to his apartment he’d been renting with Theon, set on confessing her feelings. When he opened the door, all the words she’d meant to say vanished into meaningless vapor. Instead, she’d thrown her arms around him and kissed him, whispering in his ear.

In reality, she’d left after he promised to come back, but in her dream, he whispered something else.

 _Will you wait for me?_ he asked. She promised she would.

She woke up gasping, sweating, tangled in her sheets, and pissed off.

 _How dare he_ , she thought, throwing off the covers. _How DARE he._ She jammed her feet into her slippers, didn’t bother to look at her clock, and stormed out the door.

She was going to find him and demand answers.

* * *

He was not in the basement, the spare room, the garage, or any of her siblings’ rooms, but his jacket was on the coat rack. It hadn’t been when she’d arrived home. Switching her slippers for normal shoes, she tugged on a hoodie and slid out the back door.

It was the glow of his phone screen that gave him away. Without it, she doubted she would have seen his shadowy figure on the low garden wall in the back of the yard.

Irritably, she stomped her away across the grass and around the wall so that she would face him.

She saw the exact moment he noticed her. He yanked his earbuds from his ears and nearly fell off the wall in his haste to scramble away.

“So,” she said, crossing her arms. He at least had the sense to look abashed. “You better have a damn good excuse for not coming to see me.”

“I-I don’t,” he whispered roughly.

She peered at him, looking for some evidence of injury—something that would explain how all of her siblings were acting at the hospital, but with the exception of a few small scars, she saw nothing.

“So,” she said again, her anger suddenly mixing with hurt, betrayal, and confusion. Her voice sounded watery. “So, I could have died, and you couldn’t have cared less?” she accused, tears welling. The words hurt even to say, but the look on his face as she said them hurt her more.

“Couldn’t— _couldn’t have cared_? You think I couldn’t have cared th-that you could have _died_?”

“You weren’t there! Everyone else was there, except you! The one person I wanted to see. Everyone said you were jetlagged, so I thought _fair enough, he’ll be waiting for me at home._ Except you _weren’t._ I had to come looking for you in the middle of the goddamn night! It certainly doesn’t look like you care!” She was shouting. She heard a dog start to bark a few yards over. She didn’t care.

He inhaled sharply through his nose.

“Of course, I care!” he roared, storming a few steps away from her. “That’s why I couldn’t come! I couldn’t bear to see you in the hospital with…with all those wires and tubes… Especially… espec…”

He stood away from her, his back to her. In the dim light from the moon she could see how his shoulders curled and hunched.

“Especially?” she asked, voice softening. She took a few steps forward, reaching out to put a hand on his back, but her fingers fell short.

“Especially when it’s my fault.”

Her heart leapt into her throat and her stomach bottomed out.

“Oh, Jon… Jon, no. It wasn’t your fault. I was rushing, driving recklessly. I should’ve waited out the storm.”

“When your parents got that call… I thought I lost you. I thought I fought my way through that war, to keep my promise to come back to you, only to lose you in a car accident… To be so close, and have it ripped away? It terrified me, Sansa. “

“But… I’m fine… Why didn’t you come after you found out I was fine?”

“I don’t know, Sansa! It… it was easier to just stay away.”

“Easier to stay away…from _me_? You promised to come back, just to go away again?”

“I can’t bear the thought of losing you,” he whispered.

Sansa stepped around him then, standing in front of him. She reached up with trembling hands, placing one on his chest and one on his jaw. She saw how he closed his eyes, leaning away from her touch, as if it hurt.

“And what if I can’t bear the thought of losing _you_ , Jon?” she pleaded, stepping closer yet. “I can’t, Jon. Not after waiting for two years, hoping you’d make it back. Not after waiting years— _years_ —before that to tell you how I felt. I can’t wait any longer, Jon.”

“You waited for me?” he whispered, looking at her suddenly.

“Of course, I did.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come.” He pressed his forehead against hers and Sansa felt how fast his heart beat under her palm. She leaned forward, kissing him quickly, gently. He kissed her back timidly, his hands slide slowly, hesitantly, up her back. “I wish there was something I could do…” he whispered when they broke apart.

“You can.”

“What?”

“Stay.”


End file.
